Jared + Katie Yates

Jared and Katie met while they were both living in Chicago in 2002 and were married five years later. Jared’s interest in graphic design stems from watching his father work with a multitude of mediums over the years at his print shop, Poor Richard’s, in Lakeland. Jared progressively became infatuated with the logo design process and all that goes into branding companies. What started as a simple side-project eventually grew into a part-time business commitment, but its full-time potential wasn’t reached until Katie joined the team to handle sales and administration. The two lovebirds now own and operate Y Design Co., a graphic design and branding agency.

What is your business? Y Design Co. is a graphic design firm that specializes in logo and brand identity design. We help businesses thrive by connecting with their deeper “why?” and portraying it visually via iconic logos and brand identities.

Who are your clients? Our company is primarily geared to serve entrepreneurs and small businesses, from here to anywhere.

What inspired you to become an entrepreneur? The factor most responsible for our leap into entrepreneurship is that we both prize freedom above most things, and working for other people just didn’t fit with what we wanted in life.

What is something interesting about your business? We’ve mostly focused on serving local businesses, but because technology has untethered us, especially in our industry, we’ve had the opportunity to make logos for people as far away as Oregon and the nation of Jordan.

What was the hardest thing about starting your business? Hands down, it was deciding to jump off the metaphorical cliff into working full-time for ourselves.

How has Catapult helped you? Catapult gives us the space to work alongside fellow entrepreneurs, which has the potential to build great collaboration. In our opinion, that will in turn build the spirit of Lakeland.